Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Linux Kernel Developer Declares VirtualBox Driver "Crap"

Posted by Unknown on from the not-all-code-is-created-equal dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Linux kernel developers have decided to mark the VirtualBox kernel driver as tainted crap for the significant number of problems this open-source driver has caused. The VirtualBox kernel driver reportedly causes memory corruption and other problems. With the driver being flagged as tainted crap, bug reports caused by the driver will be taken less seriously."

4 of 357 comments (clear)

  1. uugh. overblown story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    One of the developers wanted to flag the vbox driver as tainted to keep bug submissions on it from going to kernel devs.

    this is *way* overblown.

  2. Re:Slashdot Readers Declare Articles "Crap" by sstamps · · Score: 4, Informative

    It is not possible for /. articles to be taken less seriously.

    --
    -SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
  3. Re:Good job, wants some cheese for your whine? by afidel · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, MS did have those reports, probably 90% of BSOD's over the years were caused by third party drivers. MS moved large chunks of the driver infrastructure into user space and for those areas where performance was deemed more important than isolating the drivers and kernel they implemented a more robust WHQL process and required drivers to be signed after WHQL testing was completed. This probably reduced the number of BSOD's experienced by 85% or so.

    --
    There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
  4. Re:So fix it! by LateArthurDent · · Score: 4, Informative

    Parts of VirtualBox are open source.

    Correct

    If you want to network boot your VM by PXE, you need to pony up the cash for the closed source version maintained by Oracle.

    The non-open source parts of virtual box are free as in beer. That said, PXE isn't a part of it, USB peripherals are.

    The open source version supposedly supports PXE boot, but I was never able to make that version work with our environment.

    Have you tried getting PXE working with the proprietary virtualbox? I suspect it won't work either, and that the problem is that VirtualBox doesn't like your PXE setup, not that they're trying to force you into the proprietary version.

    As with MySQL, open source contributions to dual licensed software are not frequent nor great. With someone like Oracle at the helm, community cooperation with their free and open version is even further diminished.

    As much as I would generally agree with you about Oracle, they really haven't screwed up VirtualBox at all since they bought Sun. In fact, it's been seeing pretty good development with the addition of some nice features.